Businesses Are Targeting
State Privacy Initiatives

Groups Seek to Block Wave of Rules
To Protect Consumer-Finance Data

WASHINGTON -- Industry groups are mobilizing to drive back a wave of state privacy initiatives that go beyond federal protections for consumer financial information.

Just as federal regulators are putting the final touches on broad privacy rules to carry out last year's financial-services-overhaul legislation, states are taking advantage of an obscure, last-minute amendment that lets them adopt even stricter privacy laws.